Tuesday, July 21, 2009

The Rasheed Wallace Clause

So there I was, reading the news this morning that Quentin Richardson had been traded for Sebastian Telfair, Craig Smith and Mark Masden. Now first of all, I had totally forgotten Masden was still in the league. His incredible 2003-04 Season with the Timberwolves where he averaged 3.6 points, 3.8 rebounds and 2.4 personal fouls in an incredible 72 games. Secondly, and more importantly I suppose was the fact that Quentin Richardson had been traded for a third time in the last month. Thats right, one month. I always thought there was a law that stated a player could not be traded within the sixty days following said trade. So doing a little bit of research, I found on the ESPN Trade Machine this little note:

"If a team is over the cap and receives a player in a trade or claims a player off of waivers, they cannot trade the player in combination with other players for 2 months. The player can be traded by himself."

Well that is my learning for the day. A player can be trade stand alone regardless of when they were last traded. Simple. Much like when Rasheed Wallace was traded to the Hawks from the Blazers Feburary 9, 2004, then subsequently traded to the Pistons 11 days later, after only one game with Atlanta. Darrell Arthur also has a similar rap sheet, selected on draft night by New Orleans, followed by trades to Portland, Houston and Memphis all in the one night. Impressive stuff.

So what is next for Richardson? Considering he is getting treated like a joint at a Snoop concert, who really knows. It could potentially be a pre-cursor to a deal involving Rubio, or it could simply be the Timberwolves trading a way a bunch of average talent...for some more fairly average talent.

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